November 20, 2005

Danger Will Robinson...You're Drunk!

Those Koreans are at it again. First, they come out with cool breathalyzer cell phones...now, they've got robot bartenders. Meet the T-Rot, a robot with an unfortunate name and some pretty cool skills behind the bar.

The skin, developed by a team led by Gang Dae-im and Kim Jong-ho from the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science, has polyamide film and three-axis sensors that can detect vertical pressure and horizontal sliding. It is capable of recognizing the weight of objects with a less than 10 g margin of error when it holds a 100 g object.

That means it can pick up glasses and accept your tips without applying robot-like crushing force, plus it can apparently carry on a converation. Hope you don't mind chatting about oil viscosity and how robosexy R2D2 is.

We did some digging around after reading about T-Rot and found another robotic bartender a bit closer to home, and with a slightly more intuitive name. The RoboBar is made by MotoMan, an Ohio company, and comes tricked out in its own tuxedo. Customers order their drinks from a touch screen, and RoboBar mixes them up and distributes them. The system can also make batches of drinks for distribution to tables..

There's no word on whether either robot bartender can listen to your problems and give you robotic advice, a great feature we've found in flesh-and-blood bartenders. Plus, you can be assured that robotic bartenders aren't going to give you a heavy pour because they like you - although we just found out about a new wireless liquor spout that might keep human bartenders from pouring heavy too. Damn you, digital age. Pardon us while we go out to find some real-live bartenders while we still can.